Ring of Fire Press Books

The war had been raging over the Germanies for a generation, displacing millions of Europeans and leaving increasing numbers with post-traumatic stress syndrome. One such victim who has grown to be a Lutheran Pastor is once again displaced and wanders into the town from the future, Grantville. It’s a case of being in the right place at the right time as he adapts to Grantville’s attitudes on religion and is put in a position to use his speaking skills to mesmerize audiences. Add in the new up-timer radio which allows him the opportunity to reach large areas of amazed down-timers who are already in awe of the changes that have swept over them from the Ring of Fire, and are open to the other new ideas still flowing out, he has fallen into a position to sway the minds of a ready, willing, and able to follow audience that even further increases his powerful potential. Naturally, such a powerful influencer attracts other great and powerful forces who seek to use his skills to advance their agenda. This is the story of that man, Dieter Fischer, and that radio station, Voice of America, and how together, they were able to influence history.

There is a new and expanded rewrite of this book titled " Saving the Dodo " available now. You can find it here on Amazon or on the Ring of Fire website. The dodo is extinct and every American knows it. Caroline Platzer certainly does when she explains it to a very upset Princess Kristina. But, that was then and this is the seventeenth century! The last recorded sighting of the dodo was in 1662 and now it is only the year of our lord 1635. Is 1635 too late to save the dodo? Even if it's not, is it humanly possible? Princess Kristina is determined to find out! But how? Enter Pam Miller, Grantville's resident birdwatcher and nature lover. When asked by the Princess to lead a mission to the distant Indian Ocean Isle of Mauritius to prevent the hapless dodo's inevitable extinction, Pam balks at first, but finds herself drawn to the challenge as inexorably as a moth to the flame, for wasn't saving the dodo one of her own childhood dreams? She and Princess Kristina hatch a plan, bonded by their mutual love for the natural world.The whole thing will be terribly risky, a long journey in a sailing ship around the Horn of Africa and out into the still mostly unexplored vastness of the Southern Indian Ocean, Can Pam Miller save the dodo? Can she save herself and her companions from the multitude of threats they will face along the way? The only thing Pam knows for sure is that second chances are hard to come by.

This book is a series of scholarly works based on the known facts of the 1630s and the theoretical effects of the Ring of Fire presented as part of the book 1632 and subsequent books and stories placed in the 1632 fictional universe. Those articles focus on medical care before and after the Ring of Fire. And how the introduction of modern medical knowledge would affect the medical practices of the seventeenth century. The articles include: Herd Immunity by Vincent W. Coljee Crude Penicillin: Potential and Limitations by Kim Mackey A Night with Venus: STIs and Their Treatment in the 1630s, Part One by Gus Kritikos. Common Childhood Diseases in the 1630s, Part One: Fevers with Rashes by Gus Kritikos The Progression of Trauma Care and Surgery after the Ring of Fire, Part 1 by Gus Kritikos The Progression of Trauma Care and Surgery after the Ring of Fire, Part 2 by Gus Kritikos The White Plague by Brad Banner The New Royal Touch: Synthesis of Anti-TB Drugs by Iver P. Cooper Together these articles make quite a good start on what you need to know to write a medically based story in the 1632 universe.

Not every hero stands at the forefront of battle, chopping up, or gunning down the foe. Johan Kipper, an old and worn mercenary who had done more than his share of chopping up and gunning down, finally found his hero, his liege lord, not in a great captain, but in David Bartley, a fourteen year old boy who was just trying to make sure his family could get by. A lad who was trying to protect his family by making rather than taking, by building rather than destroying. And, more, a lad who didn't need to knock Johan down to feel tall or make Johan afraid to feel brave.Never in his long life of war and hate had Johan met someone courageous enough to be kind.This is the story of Johan Kipper, known across the Germanies as Bartley's Man. How he went from down-and-out mercenary to, well, you know what he became. Everyone knows what he became. Bartley's Man.Bartley's Man Started out as several stories in The Grantville Gazette. We, Paula Goodlett and Gorg Huff, were filling in the gaps just for the fun of it. Later, we were asked to rewrite and add to it so that it could stand alone as a novel. This expanded edition of Bartley's Man is written expressly for Eric Flint's Ring of Fire Press. It joins the library of existing books in this series. Much of this book is new for this edition.

When Italian musician Giacomo Carissimi hears about Up-time music in Grantville he sets off across the Alps to see and hear these wonders. Nothing will keep him from his dream of learning the new music and seeing new instruments, not even warring militias and the threats of plague. He shares the trek and what he finds in a series of heartfelt letters and several short stories. These stories and the accompanying nonfiction essays were originally published in The Grantville Gazette.

Sometimes it takes a lot of travel and a little chemistry to find love. For down-timer Matthias Ehrenhardt it is certainly true. His life begins inauspiciously at the loss of his home and family but the plucky young man does not give up. Instead, he takes his chances at the new university to study engineering. Only one thing worries Matthias. He has loved the gentle Dora all his life and he suspects she loves him in return. But will her father let her wait for a penniless orphan who is dedicating himself to engineering? Up-timers may think highly of engineering but Dora's father is not so sure. The education Matthias gets in engineering is almost as astounding as the one he gets living and studying wth the Up-timer students. Love and Chemistry is the story of one young man's education in chemistry, life and love. Parts of this novel originally appeared in The Grantville Gazette as The Apprentice.

What if the colonization of a large portion of North America had been dominated by one of Europe’s small nations instead of, as actually happened, by the great powers of France, Britain and Spain? Specifically, Denmark. In real history, Denmark did have a few small settlements in the Caribbean, but they never amounted to much. But what if, given the very different parameters of the power equations produced by the arrival of Grantville, Denmark had been able to dominate a large portion of what is today called “Canada”? The possible ramifications were fascinating to me. A nation like early 17th century Denmark didn’t have the military power or the population to simply overwhelm the indigenous peoples of North America. Willy-nilly, whether they wanted to or not, Danish settlers would have to develop a modus vivendi with the people they encountered in the New World. The hybrid societies which the French settlements originally produced such as the metis, which were cut short by the British victory in the Seven Years War, might have emerged and become more stable and long-lasting. Who could say? It seemed to me that Herb’s project was interesting enough to support—and no matter what the final outcome, was bound to produce a number of good stories. So, here we are, with the second volume of that project. I hope you enjoy it.

Whether it was a blessed miracle or a disastrous catastrophe, the arrival of Grantville in Europe in the year 1631 created changes that are long-lasting and spreading wider and wider as time passes. In 1634, Louis DeGeer, statesman, merchant, and player of the game of princes, having extracted as much information and technology as he could out of Grantville, makes his move to establish a new state in the Rhineland, a republic that would draw on much of the political philosophy brought back through the Ring of Fire by Grantville. There are those in the westlands of Germany and the Rhine Valley who aren't happy about that. Louis' enemies draw on all the forces of the status quo to oppose his efforts. Louis discovers that it will take strength and determination coupled with careful preparation and planning to face them. And the ultimate confrontations leave things up for grabs until the final moments.

Writen by: Eric Brown, Robert Waters and Anna G. Carpenter The year is 1635. The event known as the Ring of Fire is four years behind us, and yet, there are still strange occurences taking place. Enter the Gesellschaft der Ungethüme, The Monster Society, a Live Action Role-Playing group (LARPers) who have sworn an oath to protect Grantville and its shadowy surrounds from ghouls and goblins, vampires and villians, and scary monsters that lurk in your attic, your mind, or beneath your bed. These intrepid down-timers team up with up-timer Natalie Clinter to keep the citizenry safe from the evils of the real world. Fear not, desperate citizens… The Monster Society is on the case.

It is 1636: five years after a West Virginia town from the year 2000 arrived in Germany in a flash of light and altered the course of history. Now, down-time master artist Daniel Block is troubled. No mention or proof of his name or life work, of which he has long been proud, made it through the Ring of Fire; it’s as if he never existed. What can a talented and proud artist like him do, to make sure this new world remembers him long after he’s gone? Daniel develops a plan to make himself one of the greatest artists the world has ever known, and he's willing to do whatever it takes to see his dreams fulfilled. Even if it means risking himself, his wife, and his children. Intent on changing his own history, Daniel journeys to Grantville to learn about these Americans and their wild and outrageous art forms. But while there, he runs afoul of the up-timers’ strange attitudes—and the law. What follows upends seventeenth century art, threatens the emperor, and changes Daniel and his family forever.

What happens when the seventeenth century encounters Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep? What happens when the Elder Gods descend upon Magdeburg? When literary entrepreneur Johann Gronow discovers the stories of H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe in the libraries and book collections of Grantville, he launches a magazine for the purpose of publishing translations of their stories. Der Schwarze Kater—The Black Tomcat—begins attracting attention immediately. From his very first reading of the first issue of the magazine, a young bookkeeper named Philip Fröhlich develops a passion to write those kinds of stories. And so begins the quest of every author—to satisfy the requirements of an editor and make that first elusive sale. As have millions of aspiring authors, Philip discovers it's not as easy as it looks. Time after time his submissions receive a rejection letter from Gronow. But Philip stubbornly keeps submitting, along the way discovering things about himself and the people around him that he never would have learned any other way.

The West Virginians from Grantville have met many historical personages since the small town was flung back in time and into a new universe. But the down-timers have too. Cardinal Richelieu cannot decide whether he likes Charleton Heston or Tim Curry better as Cardinal Richelieu. So, when the King is murdered on the way to see his unborn son, and the Cardinal is gravely wounded, who else would the Cardinal’s friends call on but D’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers! The dynamic foursome is charged with saving the Cardinal and getting him out of the reach of evil King Gaston. Even the Cardinal’s robe gets its share of adventures! Will D’Artagnan and his three friends win out and save the Cardinal?

In Iver P. Cooper's latest alternate history novel, a new contribution to Eric Flint's 1632 Universe, the romance between Juan Cardona, an officer in Spain's Manila garrison, and Huang Mingyu, a young, beautiful Chinese woman, is threatened when a Dutch-Japanese force launches a surprise attack on 17th century Manila. Manila falls and Juan is rescued by Huang Mingyu, who proves to have hidden talents and connections. It is then up to Juan warn the incoming Manila galleon of the Dutch-Japanese threat before it blunders into Manila Bay, and then to prove his worth to Mingyu's family, Who have interests of their own in the region.... Will true love prevail when Japan (the chrysanthemum), Spain (the cross) and China (the dragon) come into conflict? For readers unfamiliar with the 1632 universe, it posits a cosmic catastrophe -- the RIng of Fire -- that throws the West Virginia town of Grantville into 17th century Germany. By 1633, the ripples caused by this event have reached East Asia, and the Japanese are determined to forestall the missionary-instigated Shimabara Rebellion of 1637.

In the world the West Virginians of Grantville came from, the borderlands between France and Germany had been a source of turmoil for centuries. In the new universe created by the Ring of Fire, the situation isn’t any better. The chaotic condition of the German lands has been ended—for a time, at least. And the near-century long war between Spain and the Netherlands has finally been resolved.But now France is unstable. The defeat of Richelieu’s forces in the Ostend War has weakened the Red Cardinal’s grip on political power and emboldened his enemies, Foremost among them is King Louis XIII’s ambitious younger brother, Monsieur Gaston. An inveterate schemer and would-be usurper, Gaston’s response to the new conditions in France is to launch a military adventure. He invades the Duchy of Lorraine. Soon, others are drawn into the conflict. The Low Countries ruled by King Ferdinand and Duke Bernhard’s newly formed Burgundy, a kingdom-in-all-but-name, send their own troops into Lorraine. Chaos expands and spreads up and down the Rhine.It isn’t long before the mightiest and most deadly army enters the fray—the legions of pestilence. Bubonic plague and typhus lead the way, but others soon follow: dysentery, deadly and disfiguring smallpox, along with new diseases introduced by the time-displaced town of Grantville.The war is on. All the wars—and on all fronts. Can the medical knowledge of the up-time Americans be adapted and spread fast enough to forestall disaster? Or will their advanced military technology simply win one war in order to lose the other and much more terrible one?

Starting with a blinding flash of light, the Ring of Fire transported the town of Grantville, West Virginia, through time and space into the middle of the Thirty Years War. Now stranded in the brutal world of the seventeenth century, the lives of Grantville’s residents rocketed off on strange trajectories. Some became wealthy, selling their skills and priceless objects from the future. Others became powerful and influential figures in Europe’s tangled and treacherous politics. Still others became renowned for their knowledge and learning. And some, of course, stayed poor and didn’t play much of a role in anything. Then… there was Jimmy Dick. Born James Richard Shaver, Jimmy Dick was a well-known figure in Grantville. Depending on whose opinion you asked, he was a shrewd fellow—even a wise one—who was a thorn in the side of people who were self-important and pompous. Or he was just a jerk; a jackass; an embarrassment to the town. His nickname started out as “Jimmy the Dick” or “Dick Head.” Right after the Ring of Fire, the Germans of the seventeenth century started calling him Herr Head. This is his story.

In the Year of our Lord 1633, Mary Margret Russo graduates from Grantville High School at the top of her class. The beautiful and strong willed up-timer, as the people from the future are called, is mysteriously hired by a branch of the wealthiest family in the world. Mary finds herself far from her family, living in a beautiful castle in the Inn Valley of Tyrol. There she meets Counts, Countesses, the handsome and distant Count Johann Franz, and works hard as a teacher and consultant among the one-percenters of the day.But all is not what it seems in this gilded world, where religion, undercurrents of witchcraft, and vast sums of money create high-stakes contests, and where treachery and death await the unwary or the unprepared. Can a resolute and intelligent girl find love, happiness, and purpose in this world where she is the ultimate outsider, out of her time, alone, and in dangers she cannot comprehend? Using archetypes, occasional dialog, and story beats from Jane Austen, Up-time Pride and Down-time Prejudice tells the story of Mary Russo, Count Johann Franz Fugger, and Mary's journey of maturation, knowledge, and love in this 1632 adventure.

Ripped from his homeland to become the companion of an English spy, a young Native American of the Pequod tribe is thrust into the turbulent world of a Europe staggering under the impact of the Ring of Fire. His newfound Christianity is shaken by the loss of his master and a life-threatening injury. Following after his Mennonite friends, he goes to the time-displaced American town of Grantville and is overwhelmed by culture shock.He decides to return to the New World as a missionary. Only half a dozen warring powers and thousands of miles of ocean can block him, until he’s almost stopped by an unexpected event; love. A storm, a baby, a near-shipwreck, and a timely rescue finally see him back in his homeland. Now, all he has to do is to reach for his dreams.

Ever since the assassination of King Louis XIII and the overthrow of his chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, France has been in political and military turmoil. The possibility—even the likelihood—of revolution hovers in the background.The new king Gaston, whom many consider an usurper, is no friend of France’s Protestants, known as the Huguenots. The fears and hostility of the Huguenots toward the French crown have only been heightened by the knowledge brought back in time by the Americans of the town of Grantville. Half a century in the future, the French king of the time would revoke the Edict of Nantes of 1598, which proclaimed that the rights of Huguenots would be respected.At the center of all this turmoil is the universally recognized leader of the Huguenots: Duke Henri de Rohan. He knows from the same up-time history books that he is “scheduled” to die less than two years in the future and he has pressing problem on his hands. His estranged wife and brother are siding with the usurper Gaston and plotting against him. Still worse, his sole child and heir is his nineteen-year-old daughter Marguerite. He believes he has less than two years to find a suitable husband for her—but acceptable Calvinist noblemen, French or foreign, are sparse at the moment.What’s a father to do?

Magdeburg , the capital of the newly-formed United States of Europe, has a dark and bloody history. Most of the city and its population were destroyed when the imperialist army ran amok after capturing the city in May of 1631. The ancient Gothic cathedral was one of the few structures that survived more-or-less intact. Once the Swedish king Gustav Adolf drove out the imperialists and established the USE, Magdeburg began to recover—and then grow at an astonishing rate. New industries inspired by the technology of the time-transplanted Americans of Grantville are turning the city into a boom town, with immigrants from all over central Europe pouring in. A boom town is full of hope and aspiration—but it’s also a place that generates its own darkness and chaos. The city’s fledgling police force is scrambling to get control over the growing crime and violence. Sometimes it succeeds—but often it doesn’t. And such failures bring down the might of the city’s powerful revolutionary Committees of Correspondence, whose leader Gunther Achterhof can match any criminal’s ruthlessness. Musicians murdered, new and brutal religious cults arising, bombings and arson, spies and informers and those hunting them—these are only some of the ingredients in the reborn city of light and darkness.

Ufa is going crazy . The new capital of the legitimate government of Russia, once a trading post in the far east, is now a fast-growing boom town. Into this maelstrom come peddlers and exotic dancers, criminals and craftsmen, nobles and assassins. Crime is running rampant and the city guards that passes for policemen don't have a clue how to handle it—and wouldn’t know a clue if they stumbled right over it. They can manage to walk a beat, at least in broad daylight. But solve a crime? Not a chance. And Czar Michael Romanov and his officials aren’t any help, since they’re pre-occupied with building a nation out of spit and bailing wire. But the bargirl who was murdered had friends who cared. And thosefriends call in Vasilii Lyapuno, an engineer working at the newly-founded Dacha in Ufa and loves up-timer murder mysteries. Can Vasilii track down the killer? Luckily for him, he has the assistance of another bargirl named Miroslava, who has a unique way of seeing the world. Together they might figure out who did what to whom and who was responsible for the crime. Crimes, rather. Murder starts adding up.

It started with a letter. In Nuevo Mexico, the Spanish province farther from the king than any other, Father Philip, the only Jesuit north of the Rio Grande, received word of a new town in Germany full of time travelers. Just one article from the Britannica lights a revolt of the native population. Will it be the first colony to throw out European governance? Would it be the first American Revolution? It started with Eduardo Bernal, born in Nuevo Mexico, sixteen years old, with a love for the countryside, and his native neighbors. Could he save them from the prejudice of Spanish colonists? It started with young Teniente de Bances, arriving for the first time to the distant Province of Nuevo Mexico al Dentro. He was nineteen years old, and it had taken him three years to get there. Will one hundred fifty Spanish soldiers hold off attacks from nine thousand natives? In Nuevo Mexico, the Spanish province farther from the king than any other, Father Philip, the only Jesuit north of the Rio Grande, received word of a new town in Germany full of time travelers. Just one article from the Britannica lights a revolt of the native population. Will it be the first colony to throw out European governance? Would it be the first American Revolution?

Eliezer and Arrow St. Clair have established a homestead and forge on the Hudson, near West Point. An exiled Mohawk youth, Green-Star-Passes, takes refuge with them, along with his companion Willow Branch, an escaped Susquehannock slave-woman.The once-distant troubles of the region come home when the nearby Dutch colony of New Amsterdam erupts in a civil war. Eliezer and Arrow decide to resettle in Mohawk country, leaving the forge to Green-Star-Passes and Willow Branch. A grueling boat-trip upstream delivers Eliezer, Arrow, and their three children to Mohawk country, where Eliezer impresses the Mohawks with his metal-working and crossbows,Then smallpox erupts, and Eliezer and Arrow must fight the growing epidemic in the face of hostility from powerful shamans. Nor is disease the only danger threatening the Iroquois, who must also deal with expanding white settlement and new technology. Eliezer and Arrow St. Clair have found a home with the Mohawks, but the future remains uncertain for all of them.

In 1636, near the docks in Copenhagen, a new and unusual tavern opened. What makes the tavern unique is food and drink reputed to come from the far future. The establishment promotes optimism and new ideas, and quickly becomes a center of innovation. Sailors, workmen, scholars, spies—noble and commoner alike—flock to The Mermaid and Tiger. Momentous things have been happening in Copenhagen. An airship was built and ventured off to the far port of Tranquebar. A great war was concluded, if not in victory then at least not in outright defeat. A Danish prince will even become the future emperor of the United States of Europe. There was work to do and money to be made!Into this tumult a young man from New Spain is thrust. Diego gets a job as the chocolatero of The Mermaid and Tiger, and works with Reva Pridmore to develop chocolate like she remembered from up-time. In the process, he meets and hears stories from others who have adapted the airship steam engines to solve their problems. Soon, there will be an engine in every shop, it seems. Diego’s world—everyone’s world—is changing, and nowhere are tales being told like those in The Mermaid and Tiger.

The Ring of Fire that transported the town of Grantville from West Virginia in the year 2000 to the region of Thuringia in the middle of Europe in the year 1631 produced an enormous cascade of changes in world history. Some of those changes were big, others were huge—and some were more modest in scale. Modest, at the least, to the universe, if not necessarily to those immediately affected.Count Ludwig Guenther of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt builds a Lutheran church on his own land, not far from Grantville, and calls in a Saxon pastor of a Phillipist bent to serve the Lutheran refugee population of the area. Shortly thereafter, in April 1634, the pastor's older daughter meets and elopes with a Catholic up-timer, which prompts Kastenmayer to get Lutheran girls to marry unchurched up-timers and thereby recruit them into the parish. In the years that follow, Pastor Kastenmeyer copes with both existing ecclesio-political strands of down-time religion (from Stiefelite Lutheran heretics to Flacian Lutheran ultra-orthodox) and the strange new up-time world of shorts, blue jeans, and unknown religious denominations. His struggles and travails have a surprisingly revolutionary impact on seventeenth-century Lutheranism—perhaps to no one’s greater surprise than the pastor himself.

Miroslava Holmes, the one and only licensed private detective in the United Sovereign States of Russia, has a new case. She's been called in on a locked room murder—and to make things worse, it's the locked room of an agent of the Embassy Bureau, a 17th century Russian James Bond. This is a political case, and the Embassy Bureau isn't talking to anyone. Solving the case is going to leave Miroslava at the crossroads where law and justice part ways. But not everything is murders and spies. No, sometimes it's the theft of a piece of costume jewelry from a girl at the Happy Bottom Club. And this case leads Miroslava into the bailiwick of another detective. Detective Corporal Viktor Zuykov, who doesn't want her interference. That, however, isn't going to stop Miroslava. When money is involved things can get dangerous, and to catch the actual culprit, Miroslava and her faithful friend, Vasilii Lyapunov, must chase him to Kazan.

Frederik of Denmark, the son of King Christian IV, is the new governor of the new province of Westphalia, and harbors the dark suspicion that the Swedes who now dominate central Europe deliberately designed the province so that he would not succeed in his assignment, thus undermining his father’s position.Problems are everywhere! Religious fragmentation, cities demanding imperial status, jurisdictional disputes among the nobility and between the nobility and the common folk—there’s no end to it. And then matters get still more complicated. Annalise Richter, a student at the famous Abbey of Quedlinburg, wants Frederik to correct an injustice. Her mentor, the Abbess of Quedlinburg, is being prevented from running for a seat in the House of Commons because she is, well, not a commoner.Surely Frederik can do something to fix this wrong!The prince is of two minds. On the one hand—being very much his father’s son—he has developed a great passion for the marvelous young woman. He is determined to marry her. On the other hand…She’s Catholic. A bit of a problem, that, for a Lutheran prince.But there’s worse. She’s also the younger sister of Gretchen Richter.Yes, that Gretchen Richter.

There are many stories in the naked city of Grantville. Did Wallenstein come to Grantville secretly? Is Cardinal Richelieu still alive? How did Bigfoot get trapped in the Ring of Fire? Does Cyrano de Bergerac really have a huge schnozz? Denis and Betsy, intrepid reporters, bring all that is hidden and secret to light in the pages of The Grantville Inquisitor.

It’s a matter of security.When the Ring of Fire drags Grantville, West Virginia back to seventeenth-century Germany, down-time veteran Edgar Neustatter finds himself among the survivors of a unit devastated by the up-time Americans and their Swedish allies. After wintering in Grantville, they return home to find that while they have changed, their village has not. Having glimpsed the promise of a republic ruled by its people rather than lords and tyrants, Neustatter leads his men and their families back to Grantville to establish a new agency: Neustatter’s European Security Services. The city from the future counts cowboys and detectives among its heroes—and still needs them.Join Neustatter, Astrid Schäubin, and NESS as they face desperate refugees, towns on the edge of revolution, and those who want to preserve the old order at all costs, while juggling basic training, modern education, and the day-to-day challenges of living in a boom town. Does NESS have the flexibility, training, and firepower to survive in the new timeline?

Vasilii and Miroslava are back at work again. Czar Mikhail wants a rail line built from Ufa, the capital of his United Sovereign States of Russia, to the capital of the USSR’s newest addition, the Khazak Khanate. For that he needs a steam engineer and diplomat—Vasilii’s jobs—as well as a top surveyor. Unfortunately, the surveyor is an arrogant snob who gets himself murdered—and now the czar needs a detective as well. Fortunately, Vasilii’s paramour Miroslava came with him, so she’s there to take on the case. She and Vasilii need to solve the murder quickly without blowing up the still fragile agreement between the USSR and the new State of Kazak. And Miroslava and Vasilii aren't the only ones with troubles. Vasilii's young cousin Alla is hiding out in Moscow and has been since her family was murdered. She's having to learn how the other half lives. It's all going to come together if they can solve the murder without jeopardizing the rights of every citizen in Kazak—newfangled rights which are more fragile than anything else.

Neustatter’s European Security Services is open for business, and business is . . . too good? With the National Guard, private industry, and even a seemingly tranquil farming village caught in an explosive political crossroads all relying on NESS for missions of security, Neustatter and Astrid find themselves pressed to staff, train, and equip the agency while keeping up with their clients’ growing requirements in scope and complexity. -- A simple railway escort mission involves a secretive manufacturing client from Grantville bearing mysterious cargo and a captured fugitive all destined for Magdeburg during the Baltic War . . . what could possibly go wrong? -- The Bible Society hires NESS to guard a flock of Anabaptist, Catholic, and Lutheran high schoolers en route to riot-torn Erfurt and Jena, but will NESS’s own pastor tear them apart first? -- Already strapped for personnel, the last thing Neustatter needs is for a regiment of dragoon militia to choose their wagon train for . . . “involuntary provisioning.” Can a handful of badly outnumbered agents protect a village that isn’t sure it wants their help? Missions of Security is the sequel to A Matter of Security , and contains the full text of the previously published short story, “Blood in Erfurt.”

This book is an extensive rewrite and expansion of "Second Chance Bird" Every American knows about the poor dodo, the veritable poster child of wildlife extinction. When Caroline Platzer explains the bird's total extinction to her young charge, Princess Kristina, the very upset princess is determined to do something about it—and it may not be too late! The last recorded sighting of the dodo was in 1662 and now it is only the year of our lord 1635. Maybe, just maybe . . . Enter Pam Miller, Grantville's resident birdwatcher and nature lover. When asked by Princess Kristina to lead a mission to the distant Indian Ocean Isle of Mauritius to prevent the hapless dodo's inevitable extinction, Pam agrees. Wasn't saving the dodo one of her own childhood dreams? Now, thanks to the Ring of Fire maybe she actually can! She and Princess Kristina hatch a plan, bonded by their mutual love for the natural world. The whole thing will be terribly risky, a long journey in a sailing ship around the Horn of Africa and out into the still mostly unexplored vastness of the Southern Indian Ocean. Can Pam Miller really save the dodo? Can she save herself and her companions from the multitude of threats they will face along the way? The only thing Pam knows for sure is that this is her chance to change history, and an ungainly flightless bird is counting on her.

Karen Bergstralh was one of the early pioneers of what became the massive, multi-author Ring of Fire alternate history series. Her first published story, “One Man’s Junk,” appeared in the fourth issue of the Grantville Gazette electronic magazine that is devoted to the series—the fourth issue of what are now ninety-six issues. Other stories followed quickly: five more of her stories were published in the next seven issues of the magazine. Karen was one of those unusual people for whom fiction writing came easily and naturally. Eventually, she also turned her hand to writing fact articles for the magazine. Karen was an experienced horsewoman, and had a deep knowledge of what seemed to be pretty much everything connected to horses—draft animals of all kinds, in fact. She was an invaluable resource for many writers in the series. Karen passed away years ago, sadly. But here, finally, all her stories and articles are collected in a single commemorative volume

Big things are happening in Grantville since the whole town was sent through time and space to war-torn seventeenth-century Germany, and up-timer nursing student Krystal Reed isn't handling it very well. She never wanted to live in Grantville and being sent back to the seventeenth century just makes it worse. Working with doctors who think bleeding is a legitimate medical practice and that women have no business in medicine is exasperating, to say the least—but their prejudices are no match for the new medical programs in Grantville and Jena. Now if only she can recover from losing her parents, her friends, her home, her college, and her future. Nils Jorgensen and his family are just a few of the thousands of down-timers looking for a new future in Grantville. They arrive with little more than their skills. Through hard work, the Jorgensens start a fashion empire. For people like elderly Irene Flannery, life is more about smaller, personal issues. With no family left up-time, her biggest worry now that’s she’s in the seventeenth century is having a married curate at the Catholic church. (The scandal!) But she has kept a secret since FDR was President and she'll defend her rose bushes to the death because of it.

Neustatter’s European Security Services encounters a campaign of industrial sabotage, a pastor who attempts to limit their client base, an espionage ring, and the aftermath of the Dreeson assassination. Old nemeses and new allies complicate matters. Somewhere in Grantville is a missing heiress. There’s also a Resistance, and it has cookies. Even repeat business with established clients is complicated, not to mention dangerous. Real life proves more complicated than Neustatter’s movies or Astrid’s books as NESS looks for common threads. Which incidents are related and which are not? For Astrid Schäubin, solving cases, directing operations, and even portraying a saint are one thing, but figuring out dating in the midst of everything that’s happening is quite another. Security Threats is the third book in the NESS series, after A Matter of Security and Missions of Security .

After traveling through time and space from the year 2000 in West Virginia to 1631 in Germany, the town of Grantville faces many challenges. The biggest is finding enough food, medicine, and other supplies to stay alive and healthy while helping their new German neighbors and a constant flow of refugees do the same. Working together, they grow and gather enough food for everyone, but it's not quite what anyone is used to eating. The Germans view potatoes as animal food, unfit for human consumption, and not all the Grantvillers can accept that even small children drink beer instead of water. With the expert advice of the Grantville Cooking Club, up-time and down-time cooking is combined to create a new cuisine and to jump-start more than a few new restaurants and businesses. Meanwhile, regular life continues. How do you keep going when you know that your child, or spouse, will die because life-saving medicine or surgery isn't available in 1631? How do you cope with watching them slowly die from something that was curable in the world you came from? Greg Ferrara, Linda Bartolli, and Phillip Bartolli are forced to face these questions when the Ring of Fire happens weeks before Tina is scheduled for lifesaving surgery that, like her life-saving medication, is no longer available.

The New United States is about to join the United States of Europe, becoming the State of Thuringia and Franconia. The Thirty Years' War is still being waged. Armies cross and re-cross the German states. With war comes lawlessness, and with lawlessness comes the need for law and order. Who can fill this enforcement niche better than three retired old soldiers, known to down-timers as the Die Drei Alten Soldaten? Archie Mitchell, Harley Thomas, Max Huffman, retired US Army Master Sergeants who, with their apprentice, Dieter Issler, use their up-time experience as Deputy Sheriffs, to become the first Marshals of the newly created District Court system of the SoTF. The Marshals are little known until Thomas Bloem and his sister, Maria D'Angelo, brother and sister journalists, arrive to interview them. They record the formation of the Marshal's Service and the three Marshals, from their first case as Marion County Deputy Sheriffs, until they leave Grantville to provide law and order throughout the State of Thuringia and Franconia.

How to succeed at spying without really trying Pranksters and scammers from way back, Paolo Fucilla and Carlo Rigatti fought for Spain at the Wartburg and survived. Curious about the people who had beaten them so handily, they went to Grantville. Whatever their other faults, they were serious about keeping their oaths. When they promised not to take up arms they meant it. In Grantville, they got in trouble again and skipped town. Looking for a job that didn't include being shot at with napalm, they decided to try their hand at spying. It was a " Here, hold my beer and watch this " inspiration. It wasn't their first, and it wouldn't be their last. They went to work for the Archbishop of Salzburg. But spies need cover stories, so they decided to sell office supplies. It was supposed to be a single job, so they didn't bother to tell the manufacturer that they were now the sales reps for Vignelli Business Machines. So " hold their beers and watch ," as Paolo and Carlo demonstrate the kind of trouble they can get into.

When the Ring of Fire drags Grantville, West Virginia, back to seventeenth-century Germany, down-time veteran Edgar Neustatter finds himself among the survivors of a unit devastated by the up-time Americans and their Swedish allies. Soon, he establishes a new agency: Neustatter's European Security Services. At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).